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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
Insipid characters, satirical tone, aggravating ending...I actually liked this book a lot more than I thought I would once I got past the first two parts.
Satire that is depressing and a total downer. My kind of book!
I was rather surprised by how much I enjoyed this book, because I typically struggle to read books written in this period. I can handle the language of those written between the Regency and Edwardian eras, but these 1920s - 1940s novels are typically written in a way that leaves me scratching my head in frustration.
But this? This I enjoyed.
I loved how selfish Brenda was. Okay, she'd be utterly intolerable in person, but I liked how she barely considered anyone but herself. It was fun to read. And John Beaver's inspid behaviour was such a fun match. Those to were destined to be awful for one another. Waugh's skill at having Brenda shoot herself in the foot with a simple, misplaced 'Thank God' was a stroke of mastery.
And though I don't think Tony's ending was justified (a rather extreme and miserable fate, isn't it?), he wasn't exactly perfect, either. His snapping at John Andrew was rather cruel. The poor lad did nothing wrong but cry.
But about that ending... it really came out of nowhere. Tony? Getting stuck in the Brazilian jungle? Reading Dickens for eternity? How did that relate to he rest of the novel? I understand Waugh had just converted to Catholicism before this was published, but... I truly don't understand the logic there, or the rationale.
But this? This I enjoyed.
I loved how selfish Brenda was. Okay, she'd be utterly intolerable in person, but I liked how she barely considered anyone but herself. It was fun to read. And John Beaver's inspid behaviour was such a fun match. Those to were destined to be awful for one another. Waugh's skill at having Brenda shoot herself in the foot with a simple, misplaced 'Thank God' was a stroke of mastery.
And though I don't think Tony's ending was justified (a rather extreme and miserable fate, isn't it?), he wasn't exactly perfect, either. His snapping at John Andrew was rather cruel. The poor lad did nothing wrong but cry.
But about that ending... it really came out of nowhere. Tony? Getting stuck in the Brazilian jungle? Reading Dickens for eternity? How did that relate to he rest of the novel? I understand Waugh had just converted to Catholicism before this was published, but... I truly don't understand the logic there, or the rationale.
I sometimes forget how much I enjoy Evelyn Waugh. A funny/ironic/satirical view on British society between wars.
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. Both horrifying and hilarious, it is the story of the destruction of a family and attitudes that don't deserve to exist in the first place
It is the story of bored Brenda Last, who begins an affair with social parasite John Beaver. Her naive husband Tony eventually finds out and leaves on an exploration of the Amazon. For a satirical novel I was most impressed with how sad it actually made me feel.
It is the story of bored Brenda Last, who begins an affair with social parasite John Beaver. Her naive husband Tony eventually finds out and leaves on an exploration of the Amazon. For a satirical novel I was most impressed with how sad it actually made me feel.
Rating: 4.5 / 5
Really enjoyed this book far more than I expected to! Strangely funny in places and lots of great twists - I have no idea how it ended the way it did!
Also Brenda is the WORST
Really enjoyed this book far more than I expected to! Strangely funny in places and lots of great twists - I have no idea how it ended the way it did!
Also Brenda is the WORST
The ending is so unbearably sad that I wish I could un-read it
Such an unsettling book! It starts fairly light as a comedy of manners, skewering Britain’s upper class. I smiled a lot; even though my sympathies were firmly w Tony, Waugh’s turns of phrase and character sketches of Brenda, Beaver, and Jenny Abdul Akbar were all funny and I was enjoying myself. Then the tragedy of the son’s death, and suddenly the tone of the book shifted to something darker and more exploratory. Suddenly Tony is a man adrift, unmoored from his family home and his wife, and he washes ashore (if you will) in Brazil, in the clutches of a madman, forcing him to read Dickens for the rest of his life. Lots of commentary re the mores of the British upper classes, especially about fidelity and money, versus the natives and Catholics Tony finds in the New World. And in the end, would he have been happy if he could have gone back? I can’t wait to discuss this with my book club!